In Siberia, fall is coming. The landscape turns yellow, orange and brown. The steppe unfolds in front of Lorenzo’s eyes like a slow-motion photogram, following the smooth motion of the pedals. Lorenzo Barone, 25, from Italy, is crossing Russia by bicycle… again!
His first adventure through here was back in 2020, when he rode across Siberia in the middle of winter, at times sleeping in a tent at -55°C (-67°F)! Now, he’s in for a new challenge: he set off in February from Cape Agulhas, on the southernmost point of Africa and his final destination is Cape Dezhnev, in Chukotka, on the easternmost point of Asia, crossing 12 countries on 3 continents, for a total of 29,000 km by bike!
The idea of such an extreme journey was born during a summer afternoon of boredom in the Apennine Mountains. “I wanted to set myself a goal that would absorb all my attention and energy,” Lorenzo explains. “And that's how this project was born! I decided to ride the ‘longest road in the world’, a route that covers the longest terrestrial distance on our planet.”
“While I was planning this journey, part of me didn't believe I could make it this far; trying has been my biggest gamble,” he says on his blog, where he communicates daily with thousands of followers (120,000 on Instagram; 135,000 on Facebook). I called him while he was taking a rest in a small village in the Altai mountains with his wife Aygul, whom he met during his previous trip to Russia. “It had been ten days since we had taken a shower and rested normally,” he tells us cheerfully, with the voice of someone who is so happy to be doing what he is doing that he feels the urge to shout it to the world.
Lorenzo reached Aygul in Kazakhstan and climbed back into the saddle together with her. “We have been separated by thousands of kilometers for several months and we knew that this would be the only way to spend some time together,” he says. “Aygul has never been a cyclist, but she decided to accompany me on this part of the journey. I am very proud of her!”
And so, after the sandstorms of the African desert, the rocky landscapes of Turkey and the silence of the Kazakh steppe, Lorenzo is back in Russia, a country that welcomed him with kindness: “They always treat me well here. When I say I am Italian, everyone smiles and shakes my hand.”
In the middle of that valley surrounded by the mountains, the phone connection is not so good: the line drops and I have to call him back. “We took a day off and tomorrow we’ll start uphill again, following the river on a gravel road that will take us to an altitude of 1,600 meters,” says Lorenzo. “We mostly bike on isolated roads without traffic, from where we can see extraordinary landscapes! In Omsk Region, we rode across boundless flatlands and now we are admiring the mountains. I was impressed by the hospitality of the people in the Russian Caucasus, in Dagestan and Chechnya: I never paid for my lunch, because the owners of the grocery stores or their customers always offered it to me!”
Besides his tent, Lorenzo carries a small camp stove, a pot, a water filter, a sleeping bag, two power banks and various maps on his mobile phone that work in offline mode. “In the past, I used paper maps, but they only show the main roads, not the gravel and secondary roads. Even though I sleep in a tent in the middle of nowhere, I’m not afraid of wolves.”
Recently, Lorenzo and Aygul arrived at the final part of the Chuysky Trakt, one of the 10 most beautiful on-the-road trips according to the ‘National Geographic Traveler.’ “We have almost finished the Chuysky Trakt, a road through the Altai Mountains, considered one of the most beautiful in the world. In the last few days, we also bumped into a few cyclists: I hadn’t met one since I was in Cappadocia, Turkey, and it was nice to share experiences and information with them. Yesterday, we left the wild forests behind and now the steppe has begun. The border with Mongolia, outpost of the last tranche, is now close.”
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